Chicago Fire season 6, episode 14 and episode 15 recap and review

Chicago Fire’s two-hour event featured surprises, shocks and heartbreak. Here’s what happened in Chicago Fire season 6, episode 14 and episode 15.

We got two hours of Chicago Fire on Thursday, which meant double the dramatic moments and the plot twists. But was it as big as the anticipation?

Thursday’s first episode is called “Looking For A Lifeline” and it opens as Sylvie Brett (Kara Killmer) is starting blankly at the ceiling. She wanders downstairs and wow, things with her roommates are awkward, as they saw Antonio Dawson (Jon Seda) leave some time before. Poor Cruz, again.

Over at the Stellaride apartment, Stella Kidd (Miranda Rae Mayo) catches Kelly Severide (Taylor Kinney) in a lie. He’s claiming he works the next day when she doesn’t think he does. Severide’s mum on why he said that, but it’s forgotten because there’s a car accident almost right after they stroll into Firehouse 51.

A car has hit the cart return in a shopping center parking lot, and wound up on top of it, with a man and his wife trapped perilously inside. This is some first-rate work by our Chicago Fire stunts and effects teams, but it’s terrible particularly for the woman, who’s getting all the grief from hubby about the accident.

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Not only that, but Matthew Casey (Jesse Spencer) spots a huge red bruise on her neck. Has she been choked? When he asks if there’s anything else she wants to say, her response is “I can’t.”

As if that wasn’t weird enough, her husband further pressures her to refuse medical care, even though she has a head injury. Can someone hit him upside the head with the Slamigan already?

No, but Casey distracts him long enough for the ambulance to take his wife to Chicago Med. After the fact, Casey asks Boden (Eamonn Walker) what to do and is told to call Antonio—but leave it at that.

Even Dr. Will Halstead (Nick Gehlfuss) knows that something’s up, though he puts it in an interesting way.

"Will: I’m not a lie detector. That’s my brother’s department."

Will insists that the man’s wife has to verbally refuse treatment, and with her husband standing right there, it’s no surprise that she does. See the look on Gabriela Dawson’s (Monica Raymund) face and know we’re so not done with this.

Speaking of the Slamigan, Cruz is stunned to find out there’s a sales meeting about it. Both Boden’s brother-in-law and the guy who tried to hire Mouch away from the firehouse last season is here and they have T-shirts made already! Cruz feels like he’s losing control of his idea, but he gets some reassurance from his own shirt that says “Chairman and CEO.”

And he gives Brett ten percent of the company—but wait, why is she running out of the room nauseous? Chicago Fire fans are connecting the dots right now. So is Dawson:

"Dawson: Brett, you sound pregnant."

Elsewhere, Stella finds a note from Springfield General Hospital on Severide’s desk, as he’s been invited to the opening of their new facility. Well, it’d be nice to see Anna’s passing have some kind of impact on this show.

While we mull that here comes Chief Grissom (recurring guest star Gary Cole). He’s not just there to jibe Severide about barbecuing in the snow. He wants Kelly to come to dinner with a bunch of people Grissom feels he should know, and sells it to Severide as being able to cover his behind if Kelly ever winds up in a jam. That gets our hero to agree.

Meanwhile, Casey shows up at the couple’s house to do a welfare check on the wife. She is not happy to see him there, and tells him that no one can help her before she shuts the door on him.

Antonio comes to the firehouse and brings Kim Burgess (Marina Squerciati) with him to confirm that there have been previous CPD calls to the house, but Brett isn’t there. She demands to go to a pharmacy and pick up a pregnancy test, and then breaks down outside, telling Dawson “I can’t be pregnant.”

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Stella asks Severide about the letter from Springfield. She knows that’s why he said he was working at the start of the episode; he was using work as an excuse not to go. He tells her to stay out of it; she tells him that he can handle it, and she’s going with him.

And then the abusive husband shows up at Firehouse 51 looking for Casey, which prompts the full force of our team—particularly Boden—to get in the way. Not that Casey wouldn’t be up for going a few rounds:

"Casey: See what it’s like when someone hits back."

Afterward, our Captain is miffed when he finds out Antonio and Burgess haven’t been able to find anything to charge the guy with yet. Antonio walks right into Brett, who bursts into tears, but just as she’s getting ready to tell him she could be expecting everyone gets a phone call to the abusive home. Now it’s on fire. But is that an accident, or on purpose to get some revenge?

Casey is ready to defend himself, but is stunned when he finds the wife sitting on the couch with a baseball bat in her lap. A baseball bat that she took to her husband. He tries to appeal to her again saying he knows the accident was her cry for help, and encouraging her not to turn out like his mom. This time, she allows him to walk her out—but Chicago Fire makes sure we see that Casey leaves his helmet right next to the aforementioned baseball bat.

As the team gets back to Firehouse 51 Mouch is elated to announce that the Slamigan already has a purchase order. You know who’s not enthused? Connie (DuShon Monique Brown). And everyone else’s bubble bursts when they find out they’ve only sold two units. That’s not all the weirdness in the house: third shift stole Capp’s (Randy Flagler) new chair and put it on the roof.

Boden tells Casey that the wife is moving into a women’s shelter and her husband isn’t pressing charges, while Severide and Stella go to Springfield, where the hospital has named a nursery after Anna. That only lasts one brief scene, unfortunately, because Chicago Fire is more focused on the time Stella and Severide are spending together.

The first episode ends with Brett and Dawson getting the results of her pregnancy test. At least it’s not self-destructing. But relax, Brett’s not having a baby Antonio.

And Chicago Fire‘s not done yet! The second episode is called “The Chance To Forgive” and it kicks off with Otis (Yuri Sardarov) saying he doesn’t want to be called that anymore. He should be taken more seriously, even if his Doctor Who LEGOs just got delivered to the firehouse.

But it’s all hands on deck for another house fire. This one has its own weird twist: there’s live rounds of ammunition in the house that are exploding in the fire. Stella appears to be okay, but Otis is hit in the neck. Severide runs past Boden to rescue both of them, and there’s a really sad but beautiful scene where the whole crew surrounds Otis as Brett and Dawson do some field medicine.

"Cruz: Is he gonna make it?Brett: I don’t know, Joe. We’re trying."

The crew arrives at Chicago Med where Dr. Ethan Choi (Brian Tee) tells everyone that Otis got very lucky; he’s alive. But, he warns, the bullet is still very close to Otis’s spinal cord and even operating could be treacherous. Cruz and Lily (recurring guest star Ariane Rinehart) visit an unconscious Otis, while Brett is still emo, now about the fact that she’s not pregnant.

Stella walks out mostly unharmed, thanks to her radio stopping another bullet, and decides that they’ll do a fundraising night for Otis at Molly’s. She almost has a moment with Severide, but it’s interrupted by Boden, who needs to chew him out for disobeying orders. But when he asks what Kelly was thinking at the time, the response is surprising:

"Severide: I can’t go through this again."

The whole crew is up in arms that the owner of the guns won’t be charged, since he owned them all legally and didn’t intentionally hurt Otis. Cruz gives the kid a piece of his mind as the guy leaves the hospital in shame, and vows revenge after Otis finally wakes up.

Later in the hospital church, the father of the gun owner thanks Cruz for saving his life, and says he didn’t know his son had all those guns. Unfortunately, Fire reveals later that his wife died from her injuries.

At Molly’s, Brett thinks the pregnancy scare was her clue to re-commit to a serious relationship with Antonio. The two cross paths outside the bar, but only for Antonio to tell Brett he’s set up on a date with someone else. So much for that plan.

The next day, Severide apologizes to Boden only to cringe when he hears that Grissom and Chief Walker are at Firehouse 51. They’re not there for him, though; they’re assigning a new firefighter to replace Otis until he comes back. Now we know how Damon Dayoub is entering the show.

Why is there a call to the exact same house? (And what is it with repeating calls in these two episodes?) It turns out that the kid, burdened with guilt over Otis’s shooting and the death of his mother, is trying to kill himself in the garage. Of course it’s Cruz who has to go in and get him, and he does. Moved by watching the kid nearly die, Cruz encourages him to stay alive.

"Cruz: Give your dad the chance to forgive. You owe him that much at least."

The final act of “The Chance To Forgive” has us learning that Otis got through his surgery in one piece, and deciding he’s okay with still being called Otis. Choi sticks his head into the room and ruins the fun when he realizes Otis can’t feel anything in his toes. Uh-oh.

Casey asks Severide about getting slapped on the wrist by Boden, and says he can empathize. He also calls Severide out on being in love with Stella, because Casey Knows Things. This is the thing that finally gets Severide to man up. He walks in on Stella while she’s doing inventory at Molly’s, and when she demands to know what he’s feeling, kisses her. Well, that took long enough.

And we fade to black as it’s implied they’re going to have sex on the bar. Don’t tell Herrmann—or the health inspector!

Two hours of Chicago Fire should theoretically mean double the fun, but it does and it doesn’t in some ways. There’s plenty of drama, with the abusive husband on a rampage and then with Otis being shot—lots of moments to keep the audience on the edge of their seats.

The Otis story is interesting, because there’s more that happens in it and more payoff than any of the cliffhangers Chicago Fire has done this whole season. It’s interesting that though there have been much higher stakes in other scenes, this is the one where we see a real consequence. And how long will this play out? Because like the Dr. Charles shooting in Chicago Med, this could be a great story to tell—or not if the show skips over stuff.

And after a season and a half of Stellaride drama, at least we finally get some movement on that story. Will it stick this time?

At the same time, there are a lot of moments that could have been done better. The whole plot with Brett’s would be, could be pregnancy feels like drama for the sake of drama, and especially for Brettonio, which has had so much back and forth already, is it necessary?

Likewise, if Chicago Fire was going to bring Anna up again, it could’ve been for more than one brief scene. Severide is barely seen in Springfield before the focus pivots to him and Stella being cute on the road. It’s hard to see what Kelly was so nervous and/or angsty about.

Bigger is not always better, as we’ve seen with some of the One Chicago crossover events in the past. But this two-hour event had some great highs, and then some pitfalls, too. The whole thing can’t be perfect. Should we do it again? Yeah, why not—it definitely held our attention for two hours. But there’s also room for improvement the next time around.

Next: Derek Haas talks Chicago Fire's two-hour event

What did you think of this week’s two Chicago Fire episodes? Leave us your reaction to the movie event in the comments.

Chicago Fire airs Thursdays at 10/9c on NBC.

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