Freitag, 13. September 2013

Fall 2013 TV Preview: NBC's 'Chicago Fire' season 2 premiere



Bureaucracy's a bitch, and no one is about to learn that lesson harder than the good people at Fire Station 51 on NBC's Chicago Fire. After a season one that included in-house fighting, theft, harassment claims, and mourning the loss of their own, the second season starts with the team stronger than ever. But this time, the threats of pulling them apart come from external, higher up politics, not within.

On the second season premiere, "A Problem House", Chief Boden (Eamonn Walker) gets word that budget cuts have his house absorbing the remnants of another, recently closed house. But that doesn't mean 51 is out of the woods, either. Notorious for issues within its walls, it's on a short list for closure, too, and Boden decides to take preemptive measures to prove itself as an invaluable asset to the community. But that's easier said than done when more than half of the fires and accidents his trucks respond to in the season opener are actually because of one of his own. Kelly Severide (Taylor Kinney) is being targeted by an arsonist, led around the city putting out fires that seem to have no other meaning than to taunt. This isn't a "case of the week" situation in which the guy is caught at the end of the premiere, either, but rather it promises to be an on-going problem, just another in a string for Severide, causing Kinney to do a 180 from the joy-filled, joking dad-to-be in the opening scene to the more internalizing, humbled guy keeping his head down to avoid getting burnt by the end of the episode. Severide is not the type to be scared, but he is certainly made a bit more wary about recent events in his life and the slightly suspicious behavior around him.

Chicago Fire manages to deliver a couple of absolutely gut-wrenching experiences for characters we've come to know and love in the 44 minutes back for season two. From Dawson (Monica Raymund) and Shay (Lauren German) tending to a gunshot victim who was thrown out of a moving car while that car tries to evade police barricades in the parking lot, to a fire jumping from one building to an adjacent one, trapping an unconscious woman inside and requiring a double rescue, the stunts raise the bar once again for this "not just a procedural" adrenaline-filled drama. But it is the character turns and developments that matter the most because long after the fires are snuffed out, it is what lingers for the people that drive the story to the next week.


Severide's predicament is certainly the most pressing, as it is affecting everyone who has to fight those fires that seem to be set with a specific message for him. But there are still ramifications from other relationships ringing loudly in this episode, too. From Mouch (Christian Stolte) stepping up for more responsibility, to Herrmann (David Eigenberg), Dawson, and Otis' (Yuri Sardarov)'s bar being buried by competition, to complicated romantic relationships still being in play, there are enough "outside the firehouse" stories to satiate those who get claustrophobic, too.

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Source: Examiner.com

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