The latest episode was surprisingly heavy on law enforcement.
Chicago Fire is good at keeping fans on their toes, and it did just that in the episode “Red Flag.” The promo promised some illegal shenanigans involving a burning building and some misplaced cash, but it didn’t alert us to the fact that there would be two separate storylines involving police officers.
Storylines that do not turn out at all the way we expected. The first, and most prominent in the arc of the episode, is the one involving the aforementioned cash.
Severide (Taylor Kinney) tries to help a teenage girl when she admits that she was supposed to move the cash for a local gang that her brother had gotten involved in. She said that half was destroyed and the other half was still hidden away.
Severide thought CPD has stolen money
Severide tried to help by giving the teen a place to stay (aka the firehouse) and telling the cops about what happened. The teen was reticent to open up to the cops, however, who spent most of their time trying to intimdate Severide and tell him they would be watching for any changes in his bank account.
Severide eventually went to the designated spot where the other half of the cash was supposed to be, in an effort to protect it, but he found that it had been taken. He assumed the cops were the ones who pulled a fast one, and understandably so, given their attitude, but he turned out to be wrong!
The cash was actually taken by the teen’s grandmother, who used it to bail the aforementioned, gang-affiliated brother out of jail. They all left town in the end, and Severide was left to realize that the cops were simply doing their job.
Ritter’s new boyfriend turned out to be a cop
The second twist was less criminal, but equally surprising. Darren Ritter (Daniel Kyri) opened the episode by admitting to Violet (Hanako Greensmith) that he was dating someone new.
The suitor wanted to see where Ritter worked, but the firefighter was reluctant to let him in right away, so he made a point of keeping him at arm’s length throughout the episode.
This plot thread gets resolved at the very end of the episode, when the suitor shows up at the 51 and turns out to be a Chicago police officer! We’re very curious to see where this relationship goes for the rest of season 12!
