February flashback: Chicago PD season 3, episode 15

Two years ago, Chicago PD investigated a very strange professor in Chicago PD season 3, episode 15. Look back on the episode in our February Flashback.

With Chicago PD taking most of February off for the Winter Olympics, we’re rolling back the clock and revisiting the Chicago PD episodes that previously aired this month.

Two years ago today we were served the episode “A Night Owl,” which featured Richard Thomas (from The Americans and yes, that Richard Thomas from The Waltons) as a professor who was not at all who he appeared to be.

Kim Burgess’s (Marina Squerciati) gut instincts paid off once again when she didn’t quite trust the story Professor Adam Ames (played by Thomas) was giving her at a sobriety checkpoint at the top of the episode.

Something didn’t ring quite true when Ames claimed he was returning from giving a lecture at a university in Canada. Ames’ nervous behavior wasn’t adding up and, after a drug-sniffing canine hit on the scent, Antonio Dawson (Jon Seda) recognized the signs of a rigged trunk.

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With a little detective magic Antonio exposed the hidden compartment and bingo, a trunk full of heroin. Nice, Burgess! So nice that Detective Erin Lindsay (Sophia Bush) asked for Burgess to be moved up to Intelligence for the day to work the case.

Through a series of twists, turns and more disasters that included a double homicide and a suicide, the list of crimes that Ames was linked to or supposed responsible for just kept growing, with Ames all the while professing his innocence and ignorance. At his imposing best, Hank Voight (Jason Beghe) told him, “The longer this goes on, the deeper you get.”

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When a financial analysis revealed Ames’ secret apartment, Intelligence searched it and found a cache of hidden letters from prison inmates. Letters from one inmate, Walker, were particularly intimate. Ames finally broke down and revealed the truth, that he indeed was smuggling heroin
from Canada in an effort to raise money to pay off the debts of his special friend Walker (so he thought, anyway).

But that wasn’t the end of this Chicago PD episode. When neither the drugs nor the payment showed up on time, the drug runners kidnapped Ames’ daughter. When Ames still hesitated to give up the goods on Walker, who he believed loved him, the true depth of his sad delusion was revealed, in a particularly moving performance from Thomas.

Fortunately for Ames and his daughter, Intelligence got the job done and rescued the daughter from her captors and tracked down the ex-con that conned Ames right from the start.

But not all was murder and mayhem in “A Night Owl.” Jay Halstead (Jesse Lee Soffer) scored himself a moonlighting gig working security for a medical marijuana facility, and Alvin Olinsky (Elias Koteas) was hoping for some high quality edibles as a result. Thank you, Chicago PD season 3, for giving us the mental image of Olinsky high on marijuana.

And Sergeant Trudy Platt (Amy Morton) and Officer Sean Roman (Brian Geraghty) brought their own comedy chops to the episode when Platt insisted that Roman treat her as a candidate for a ride-along in his attempt to show her he was serious about wanting to be a field training officer.
Watching Roman turn the tables on Platt, making her buy him lunch after she failed his pop recall quiz, was comic gold.

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You can re-watch Chicago PD season 3, episode 15 on DVD or iTunes. Check back all month long as we revisit the episodes that were throughout February!

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