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Chicago Fire season 1, episode 8 rewatch: Leaving The Station

By Brittany Frederick

CHICAGO FIRE -- Season: Pilot -- Pictured: (l-r) Teri Reeves as Hallie, David Eigenberg as Christopher Hermann, Charlie Barnett as Peter Mills, Lauren German as Leslie Shay, Monica Raymund as Gabriella Dawson, Taylor Kinney as Kelly Severide, Jesse Spencer as Matthew Casey, Eamonn Walker as Battalion Chief Wallace Boden -- (Photo by: Sandro/NBC)
CHICAGO FIRE -- Season: Pilot -- Pictured: (l-r) Teri Reeves as Hallie, David Eigenberg as Christopher Hermann, Charlie Barnett as Peter Mills, Lauren German as Leslie Shay, Monica Raymund as Gabriella Dawson, Taylor Kinney as Kelly Severide, Jesse Spencer as Matthew Casey, Eamonn Walker as Battalion Chief Wallace Boden -- (Photo by: Sandro/NBC) /
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Look back at where Chicago Fire began this summer. Read our retrospective on the eighth episode as we rewatch Chicago Fire season 1, episode 8.

Over the One Chicago summer break, we’re looking back at where it all began by rewatching the first seasons of our shows—and today we’re revisiting Chicago Fire season 1, episode 8.

If you want to rewatch this episode along with us, you can find Chicago Fire season 1 on iTunes and DVD.

The eighth episode, “Leaving the Station,” is another showcase for Peter Mills (Charlie Barnett). But it’s not in any kind of good way.

Mills experiences his first major tragedy when he finds the dead body of a girl hit by a train, and he starts to question whether or not he still wants to be part of Firehouse 51.

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That’s a fairly common storyline, but what makes it different is that his mother actively encourages him to quit.

Ingrid Mills (who first appeared in the earlier episode “Professional Courtesy” and is portrayed by Linda Powell, whose other credits include the three Law & Order series and NBC‘s Blindspot) doesn’t want to see her son turn into his father.

She even goes so far as to visit Chief Wallace Boden (Eamonn Walker) at home to discuss her son’s future with his boss.

While you understand where she’s coming from, you also can’t help but know that what Mills needs most is support, not more reasons to doubt his choices.

And you just wish she’d let him make his own decision instead of trying to influence it. But this is an episode that continues to carve into Mills’ history, the loss of his father, and how much that affected his entire family. See if you remember this scene:

Elsewhere in the episode, Leslie Shay (Lauren German) deals with her ex-girlfriend Clarice (Shiri Appleby, who’d go on to co-star with Chicago Justice‘s Monica Barbaro in UnREAL), and we learn that Mouch (Christian Stolte) might have an issue with Canada.

The Clarice storyline is just as much trouble as everyone else warned Shay it would be, and the whole Canadian firefighter plotline just falls flat. Chicago Fire would do much better attempts at comic relief later on, and it just feels out of place between Mills’ issues and the paramedics trying to help a young girl they believe is being abused.

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But “Leaving The Station” is clearly Charlie Barnett’s episode, and he does well with it. Looking back, it’s a shame that we didn’t spend more time with Peter Mills and get to flesh him out more than we did before he was written out a few seasons later. Stories like this show how much he brought to the series. Watch this episode again on iTunes and DVD.

Next: The best other roles of Chicago Fire stars

Join us every Thursday this summer for our Chicago Fire season 1 review. For more Chicago Fire related news, follow the Chicago Fire category at One Chicago Center.

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