Chicago Fire season 1, episode 11 rewatch: God Has Spoken
Look back at where Chicago Fire began this summer. Read our retrospective on the eleventh episode as we rewatch Chicago Fire season 1, episode 11.
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 11.
If you want to rewatch this episode along with us, you can find Chicago Fire season 1 on iTunes and DVD.
“God Has Spoken” picks up after the first season’s holiday break, and resolves the cliffhanger from the previous episode, showing that both paramedics survived the ambulance wreck—but Leslie Shay (Lauren German) is hospitalized.
Plus, Joe Cruz (Joe Minoso) is nearly consumed by his own guilt as he deals with having killed the gang leader who was menacing his brother. How will he deal with the blood on his hands?
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That’s the most interesting part of this episode. Cruz knows what he did, the audience knows what he did, and his brother Leon (Jeff Lima) knows what he did.
But the rest of the firehouse doesn’t—and having him confess to murder would obviously cut short his tenure on the show. Unfortunately, this episode does not really go into the story, but it’s the most hard-hitting part.
Sidelining Shay is also intriguing, because looking back at this episode, it’s another reminder of how the friendship between Shay and Kelly Severide (Taylor Kinney) was something special that Chicago Fire has not been able to fill the void of since.
When the series would kill the Shay character off later, it lost that relationship and it’s episodes like “God Has Spoken” which underline how that’s still a regrettable choice, five seasons later. Not to take anything away from Sylvie Brett (Kara Killmer), but how would things be different if Shay was still around?
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In retrospect, there’s one weak spot in this Chicago Fire season 1 installment, and it’s the closing scene that shows Gabriela Dawson (Monica Raymund) and Peter Mills (Charlie Barnett) deciding to sleep together:
The issue is that it’s hard to take this moment seriously. Dawson and Mills are fine together, but it is so clearly written as a speed bump to the Dawsey relationship.
Each of the two episodes before this involved major Dawsey moments (here and here). The show has firmly established the direction it wants to go, so Dawson sleeping with Mills only one episode later is an obvious detour, not a real change of direction. She’s pursuing the man who’s honestly interested in her in lieu of the one she thinks isn’t.
Which is understandable, but if you look at it from the writers’ perspective and not the character’s, it’s hard not to feel bad for Mills. He seems far more into Dawson than she is into him, and this scene hammers that home by making the final shot an image of her cell phone—with a call from Casey on it.
It’s not uncommon for any TV show to drum up a short-term relationship to keep its main ship from getting together or even prompt them to get together, like Chicago Med did with season 2 before Manstead. But in retrospect, poor Mills—and even poor Dawson, whose love life has now been the primary subplot in three consecutive episodes. These characters deserve a break!
Watch this episode again on iTunes and DVD.
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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.