Chicago Fire midseason premiere takeaways: Inside These Walls

What should One Chicago fans learn from this week’s Chicago Fire? Look closer at the latest episode with our Chicago Fire season 7, episode 10 takeaways.

What did One Chicago fans learn from the latest Chicago Fire episode? Here’s what we took away from this week’s installment, “Inside These Walls.”

“Inside These Walls” featured Matthew Casey (Jesse Spencer) surviving the fire at his apartment and getting revenge on Gordon Mayfield (recurring guest star Colin Egglesfield) for causing that in the first place. Meanwhile, Stellaride called it quits one more time.

If you missed any of this week’s episode or just want a refresher on the events that we’re about to discuss, you can catch up with our Chicago Fire recap.

Below are our takeaways from this week’s episode:

More from One Chicago Center

• Chicago Med star on 2024 cast changes: ‘Nice to have new faces’
• Here’s the perfect Chicago Fire episode to watch on Thanksgiving
• Ranking the 8 NCIS Thanksgiving episodes from worst to best
• Mark Harmon does NOT have plans to reprise Gibbs on NCIS
• One Chicago stars tease new seasons on IG: ‘Here we come’

1) Goodbye, Naomi

This was Naomi Graham’s (recurring guest star Kate Villanova) last episode, and it also showed why she wasn’t a good fit for the show in the first place.

Seeing Casey go through what’s left of his apartment, Naomi’s reaction was not to ask what she could do to help or be sympathetic to his loss, but to tell him “It’s just stuff.” And then to tell him she was packing up and going to Switzerland(?!).

So what exactly was the purpose of her on this show? Because she slept with Casey once, got his apartment burned down, and then ran off to chase her next story in a foreign country. She was literally nothing but trouble.

From a writing standpoint, she was Casey’s in to the whole trailer park conspiracy, but in retrospect why not just let him uncover that on his own? That would have been a more palatable storyline than having his life upended by a woman who flirted right after they met, then dropped him as soon as she could. Let’s hope she doesn’t pull a Renee Royce and come back.

Watch One Chicago on fuboTV: Watch over 67 live sports and entertainment channels with a 7-day FREE trial!

2) Tyler trouble

The good news is Chicago Fire finally gave a clear answer to the Tyler storyline. The bad news is that it was the obvious one, when Tyler (returning guest star Tye White) kissed Stella (Miranda Rae Mayo).

It’s the end to a frustrating storyline. The vagueness of Tyler’s intentions made it hard to figure out exactly what was going on, and then it played out in the most obvious way. Why not just let Tyler and Stella have a platonic friendship? What would have been so wrong with that?

And then that incident prompts her to break up with Kelly Severide (Taylor Kinney)? Considering the reasons she gave for breaking up with him were the same ones that she said in their original argument, it’s surprising that it escalated to that point.

If that was enough for her to dump him, she could’ve done it in the midseason finale, not the midseason premiere. Severide didn’t make it any worse in this episode, except for having one terse conversation that lasted maybe a minute.

3) Remembering Dawson

Was anyone else quietly impressed that Chicago Fire let Casey find a photo of himself and now ex-wife Gabriela Dawson amongst the rubble of his apartment? It’s a small detail, but it was nice that the episode kept Dawson (and by extension Monica Raymund) on Casey’s mind, when the fire was an easy opportunity for the show to just turn the page and forget his past. But we saw that Gabby was still important to Casey, just as she’s still important to the fans and to the history of the show.

For the latest Chicago Fire season 7 spoilers and news, plus more on the entire series, follow the Chicago Fire category at One Chicago Center.